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How does Bollywood handle mental illness?

While we here in the United States have been able to create a respect and more accurate portrayal of mental illness in movies, that’s not true for the rest of the world. In the article from The Aerogram, Farah Naz Khan highlights recent films from Bollywood that haven’t done the best job at portraying the mentally ill. While the first movie looked at deals with alcoholism, not entirely a mental illness, but one caused by the own user, it still portrays it entirely inaccurately. Khan says that the protagonist of the film “he goes on an alcohol abstinent weekend getaway with his girlfriend, where he miraculously suffers little to no alcohol withdrawal symptoms.” If you were struggling with an addiction such as alcoholism in this context, then this portrayal is entirely inaccurate and handled wrong in this context. However, the film may not be entirely centered on this, and may only be trying to convey that “love can fix anything,” which isn’t entirely true in this sense.

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One thought on “How does Bollywood handle mental illness?”

I feel as though this article embodies what everyone wants love to be. India, known for being strict, having arranged marriages and all about education. This very strict society, however, does not take this attitude when creating movies. However this lightheartedness towards very serious issues can have much negative feedback. For example, it seems as though the country does not take the issues of mental health very seriously or rather not serious enough in such movies. Love does not conquer all and movies should reflect this